Today's mobile communication devices comprise various functions not necessarily limited to receive and place a telephone call. Some mobile communication devices, such as smart phones, provide additional functions, such as playing music, making pictures or providing navigation information.
With an increase in different functions of a mobile communication device, such as a cell phone, or other type of mobile phone, there is also a need for more complex user interfaces. Currently more and more handsets are controlled through touch screens, which are sensitive to a finger or stylus placed on their surface, wherein different functions depending on the icon displayed on the touch screen can be selected by a user. Manually locking a touch screen or a keypad constituting a user interface or automatically locking after a certain time without usage of the keypad has expired, are known so that a function of the mobile communication device is not accidentally triggered.
However, there are situations in which a function is carried out and it is suddenly deactivated because another function is activated by the user accidentally pressing a key or an icon on the user interface. This is especially problematic when receiving an incoming call, since hanging up could be considered as rude by the caller, for example.
Due to the decrease in size of mobile communication devices a speaker, a keypad or touch screen, and a microphone are usually placed close to each other and due to the increasing sensitivity of keypads and touch screens, it is easily possible that the user receiving an incoming call accidentally interrupts the call by triggering another function, such as a call termination function when pressing the mobile device to his/her ear or cheek, for example.
Therefore, it is desirable to provide an improved mobile communication device and method therefore with which triggering of a certain function can be avoided in some situations.